St. Benedict’s, Los Osos (The Rev) Brian McHugh +
The only reward for emulating the Jesus of Mark's gospel is to have done it. (1)
A priest colleague and friend of mine wrote these words recently in his Blog. There is an obscene explanation that has lurked for millennia amongst the various “explanations” of why Jesus died on the Cross. It says that “God” deliberately sent the Divine Logos/Word, in the guise of his “son”, to suffer horribly and to die on the cross, so that human beings, unable to extract themselves from the consequences of sin, would be “saved” by the substitution of Jesus as the only “worthy” required sacrifice. “Obscene”, perhaps blasphemous, are the only words I can think of adequately to describe this lie. It completely ignores the moral integrity of Jesus’ Life, freedom, and work as a person, let alone as “God’s Son”. It implies that whatever Jesus did or said had nothing to do with what was already a predetermined outcome. And it implies that “salvation”, meaning “wholeness” and health as a human being is a “done deal” and has nothing to do with our response. This is false.
To “venerate the Cross” under such circumstances would, I think, indeed mean that we were venerating an “instrument of torture” - and an immoral “God”. Further, it makes no sense when held up against the words of the apostle Paul, who said: “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me”; and, “We must work out our own salvation in fear and trembling.”
We must ask the question, especially on Good Friday, “What did Jesus do that He ended up on the Cross?” And secondly, “What does it mean, for Jesus, and for us?” On this Good Friday, let’s take a look at His Life for a few moments.
Jesus was an implacable critic of the “organized religion” of His time – the religion based on the Pentateuch which His people had followed for over 1500 years. And he was an implacable critic of those whom He saw perverting the essential message of that religion for their own power and prestige. He regularly denounced them and their interpretations, and taught His disciples to follow His “Good News”. He spoke out, following in the footsteps of the great prophets and of great kings like Josiah, against “harmful religious tradition and intolerance”. In His zeal for His “Father’s House”, he drove the debasers out of the Temple. One of the Gospels is clear that this was the act that set in motion a plan to kill Him.
When Jesus spoke of “taking up our cross and following Him”, He meant us to join with Him, in our own time and place, in this determination to rid our religion of traits that are contrary to God’s desire. I could list those things that I would put on that list, but I will let you build your own. And then we must ask what we will do to join Him in carrying that cross, out of Love for God and for God’s people. We must start with our own Episcopal religious tradition; what in it is contrary to the will of the God of Love? And we must be respectfully critical of the great and powerful religions of the World which accuse others of being “Worldly” but which themselves oppress others in their search for Worldly power under the guise of “spiritual concern”.
Jesus could not avoid confronting “the principalities and powers of imperious politics, hierarchical economics and malign social policy”, either Jewish or Roman. The behaviour of both the Roman and Jewish people in power was contrary in so many ways to His understanding of the politics of God’s Kingdom. We get His point clearly and gently but firmly in His encounter with Nicodemus, in His insistence that we must be “born again” in and by that same Spirit through which He was adopted a Son of God His baptism.
Christians cannot be other than fearless confronters of “the principalities and powers of imperious politics”, whether coming from political leaders or the economically powerful of our World. I don’t have to rehearse for you all those things which are contrary to the health and welfare of the peoples of the World perpetrated by our rich and powerful, given the situation we are in these days. Whether it is the use of torture, or the militarism, or the failure of many administrations to provide healthcare for all Americans, or the continuing tendency of the present administration to curry favour with bankers and arms dealers to the detriment of regular hard-working folk, or the dictators of the world feathering their own nests while their people starve or die in armed conflict, Jesus asks us to “take up our cross” and follow Him in the way of loving confrontation of these policies.
Jesus was a constant foe of anything which “robs individual human beings of their innate dignity”, whether it be those oppressed and denied their humanity by the powerful, or the oppressing powerful themselves who are demeaned and twisted in soul by their lust. In Jesus’ time, this included women, servants, the downtrodden poor, Samaritans, Pharisees. Today He would stand with Gayfolk, women still, and all the men whose humanity is eviscerated by a false and oppressive definition of “masculinity”, and certainly the poor and destitute whose numbers continue to grow in our World while the numbers of the obscenely rich continues to grow as well.
Going willingly to death in order to witness unflinchingly to the unconditional compassion of His Heavenly Father and ending up being crucified is what makes the cross not an instrument of shame and suffering but, as Paul said, an instrument not of Death but of Life – and a worthy symbol for the Christian Church. It is the sign that out of Love alone God brings Life.
I quoted my friend Harry Cook at the beginning:
The only reward for emulating the Jesus of Mark's gospel is to have done it.
We venerate the instrument by which the Christ gave all in Love. Most of us will not be killed for the Kingdom of God. But, every Good Friday, the Cross calls out to each of us to follow Jesus in the way that leads not to death, but to eternal wholeness and health - perhaps with fear and trembling, but also with sure and certain hope that we are on the sacred path of what we call “salvation”.
(1)
The Rev. Harry Cook, Holy Week = Homiletic Bonanza, March 30, 2009. I am specifically using some of his thoughts in this sermon.
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